


Smoke in the Air

by valamerys



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, F/M, Master/Slave, Post-ACOMAF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 16:09:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10767762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valamerys/pseuds/valamerys
Summary: The Spring Court has fallen, and Lucien is a spoil of war. As much as Elain wants him, she has no intention of being kind to the man who ruined her immortal life before she had the chance to live it.





	Smoke in the Air

**Author's Note:**

> "hey claire, did you seriously start ANOTHER two-part thing you may or may not finish?" shhhhhhhhhhhh young ones, shhh

The Spring Court fell quickly, and without dignity. Once Feyre revealed her deception, it was over so fast Lucien barely had time to draw his sword before Illyrians swarmed them all; he wasn’t allowed so much as the grace of a struggle, of obtaining wounds to mark him as having gone down fighting. He’s no more than lightly bruised where he kneels on the obsidian stone of the Court of Nightmares, bound and gagged awaiting sentencing with the rest of them.

Tamlin, on a raised slab before them, is alternating between a seething fury at the deception he’d been blindsided by and sheer, embarrassing blubbering, as one of Rhys’s lackeys reads off a list of his war crimes. Rhys sits, cold and austere as the mountains above them, on that terrible black throne, and Feyre sits beside him in its newly-constructed twin. She looks almost feral in her twisted triumph, in her return to the place she belongs.

Lucien can’t harbor any ill will against her, even likely as she is to kill him in a few minutes. The timing of her betrayal surprised him, the act itself did not.

“And, finally and most grievously, collusion with the former King of Hybern, traitor to the realm, to bring about the fall of the wall and the breach of the treaty with humans,” the lesser fae servant completes. “How do you plead to the charges, Lord Tamlin?”

Rhys gives a dispassionate gesture, and the guards flanking Tamlin make to remove the gag from his drooling maw. Whispers filter from the savagely dressed crowd gathered around the proceedings, Rhys’s nightmare courtiers come to play their part in this mockery of a court of law.

“You can’t do this,” Tamlin snarls, the moment he can, “I’m a High Lord of Prythian, the others won’t stand for the insurrection of a deceiving  _ whore— _ ”

Lucien’s not even sure which one of them Tamlin was insulting, but he supposes it doesn't matter: Tamlin suddenly chokes, cut off. His mouth moves, his eyes wild, but no further sound comes from his throat: Rhys has a hand out—some magic there silencing him.

“That sounded,” And there’s dark thunder in every syllable of Rhys’ tightly-controlled voice, “Like a  _ guilty _ to me, don’t you think, darling?”

Feyre's expression is warped with hate for the pathetic remains of a man she once died for. “Very much, my lord,” she says, smooth as a lake frozen over. “Morrigan?”

A blonde woman who looks like a knife given form steps from the shadows layering the dias. “My queen?”

Lucien thinks he recognizes her, vaguely. He’s already picked over every person in the room with his eyes as best he can; telling himself he wasn’t looking for anyone in particular.  (But, if he was—she’s not here, not anywhere he can make her out. The bond in his chest is still, quiet. But it tells him she’s not far, makes him wonder what she thinks of this, if she even knows he’s about to die, if she cares, if she’s glad—)

“Your gift is truth,” Feyre says to the woman, eyes still on Tamlin’s noiselessly articulating form, held in place now by the guards. “Tell me, how best might I sentence this prisoner to help him atone for his sins?”

Lucien feels more hollow than truly afraid, but the cruelty in Feyre’s gaze, be it real or fake, is an icy drip down his spine.

The Morrigan tips her head up, regards Tamlin with an empress's posture. Tamlin goes oddly still, as though possessed somehow by it, and Lucien is reminded of Rhysand’s daemati powers. Perhaps this is similar. She releases him, and Tamlin visibly slumps, the woman’s lip curling back. “He fears pain. He fears the loss of control. And he deserves an eternity of punishment. The prison would be a good place for him, though torture would not go amiss either.”

Feyre and Rhysand catch each others’ eyes, and Rhysand nods.

Feyre stands, as gracefully as any born high fae, no trace left of that gawky, sullen human child Lucien once pitied. “Then, Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring court,” she says with beatific coolness, “I sentence you to torture by the hand of my mate and The High Lord of the Night Court, and then imprisonment, where you will reflect on your crimes for the rest of your immortal life.”

Tamlin’s mouth opens in a wordless bellow, face growing red and chains rattling as his body thrashes in fury. The guards struggle to hold him in place. Even if the love Lucien once felt for him shriveled into a hopeless, brittle obligation long ago, it is hard to watch.

“My lord,” Feyre says, with a meaningful look at her husband as she again sits.

At first, Lucien does not know what she means by it. But horror washes over him, hot and sickly, as Tamlin’s eyes go wide and his body gradually grows still.

Rhysand is going to torture Tamlin _ right now. _

Tamlin’s voice is returned to him in time for them all to hear the ringing screams. His body convulses, and the guards back away, not ordered to but simply because they know their lord’s methods. Babbling pleas break through the shrieking but Rhysand ignores them, carved from granite as he ruthlessly tears through the once-great Lord’s mind, causing him unfathomable, endless pain, playing his nerves and his heart and his head like an instrument to keep him awake and alive and in agony.

Lucien closes his eyes around the ten-minute mark and keeps them closed. He’s not proud of it, but then, there is no pride left to him here, the natural end to his increasingly wretched life, moments from what he is sure will be his death—or perhaps they'll imprison him too. Either way he feels little about it other than a seeping despair; there is no true fear, no willingness to fight.

Tamlin’s torture lasts for perhaps an hour. Lucien, eyes closed, swallows down bile when the sound of breaking bones starts, accompanied by exuberant, nasty jeers from the courtiers—throwing up while firmly gagged wouldn’t end well. But finally, finally the screaming relents, becomes soft, broken sobbing, and Lucien looks.

His Lord is a bloody, shredded wreck, limbs askew, the scent of piss in the air. Lucien feels nauseous again as Rhysand sits back, the faintest gleam of sweat on his brow, and gestures guards to haul Tamlin away. He moans and cries with every jostle of his wounds, with the ringing memories of whatever horrors Rhysand made him see and feel, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Lucien feels tears sting his eyes, as though his body knows how to react to this even if his feelings remain out of reach.

“The fox, then,” Rhys says, voice a little harsh with exertion, and Lucien’s attention is dragged back from Tamlin as guards grasp his arms and haul him towards the same platform. They shove him down, and, stumbling, with his hands bound in iron behind his back, he pitches face first onto the stone, into the wet of Tamlin’s blood.

Laughter from the gathered crowds. One guard takes hold of his ripped jacket, hauls him to his knees, Lucien’s hair sticking to his blood-slicked cheek.

“Lord Lucien, Son of Beron, Emissary to Spring these past three hundred years,” The little lesser fae lackey begins, reading Lucien’s indictment now from his scroll, “You are hereby charged with—“

The list is absurdly long, and at least a handful of the words in them sound like things Rhysand made up. It mirrors Tamlin’s, or compliments it, rather; many of Lucien’s crimes involve the term _complicit_. Feyre looks guarded, the black diamond crown on her head glinting.

“How do you plead to the charges, Lord Lucien?” The lesser fae asks. The guard makes to remove his gag, and Lucien’s jaw aches with anticipation, teeth clenched around the foul fabric.

“I think that won’t be necessary,” Rhysand says, slick as oil, from the throne, and Lucien’s chest seizes as the guard halts. “Little Lucien has a way of getting himself in trouble when he speaks to his superiors, best to not give him the opportunity.”

The first true flash of anger Lucien’s felt in a long time comes up at those words, and he tenses under the guards’ still hands.

“Let’s just assume he pleads guilty,” Rhysand continues lazily, to snickers of approval. “To save time. Morrigan, if you would be so kind.”

The blonde woman regards him as she had Tamlin, and he feels the paralysis he watched earlier: struck boneless but frozen under her strange gaze, violated by some magic he doesn’t understand. 

Her brow creases. “There’s little to be gained from torturing him,” she murmurs, before suddenly releasing him. Lucien fights a sudden surge of dizziness, tries to keep himself upright as she turns back to her High Lord and Lady.  “He’s empty. Doesn’t fear pain or loss. Death would be best, no point in spending too much time on it.”

Perhaps that should make him feel something. It doesn’t. 

“A shame,” Rhys says, comfortably. Callously. “To kill something that loyal. Like putting down a dog.” Something prickles faintly in Lucien, anger or hate, maybe, or a pale imitation of them, but there’s little he can do but glare weakly at the High Lord.

Feyre’s face is shadowed as she stands. If she is conflicted, if any thread of the strange friendship they once shared clings to her still, it does not show. “Then, Lucien, Emissary of Spring, I sentence you—” But she halts, her eyes going beyond him, just as Lucien registers the whispers from the crowd— he turns as much as he can manage, as much as the guards will allow, to see.

The bond in his chest stutters like a heartbeat.

The wicked partiers part like a cloud of gnats, and it is Elain, tiny Elain, they give a wide berth to. She could hardly look more out of place amongst them, dressed in something flowy, of soft lavender, looking like dewy flowers coalesced into a girl, like the only truly living thing in this realm of despair and cold black stone. Her eyes find Lucien’s.   
  
“Elain,” Rhys greets broadly, voice echoing faintly in the cavern. It’s casual, but even without looking at him Lucien knows there’s some note of tense surprise there. “You’re just in time to watch your sister sentence this traitor to death.”

Elain’s eyes go to Rhys, just once, before she looks back to Lucien, but she says nothing. Lucien can feel the disquiet in the air, the whispers— no one ignores the High Lord like that. The guards shove him, then, apparently done allowing him the privilege of looking at her, and he barely manages not to fall forward again.

But Elain cuts a broad path across the space, still moving towards him as she circles around to the front of the room. Feyre and Rhys exchange a glance, but neither says anything to halt her. The crowds whisper, the guards shift uncomfortably, and Elain ignores them all as she steps closer and closer to Lucien, face strangely blank.

He is almost glad of the gag. He can’t say anything stupid this time.

She stops, and her hand extends towards him. Lucien inhales sharply as she reaches out and her fingertips make air-light contact with his bloody cheek, the perfect death-stillness of the whole massive cavern magnifying the motions, making him feel almost apart from his own body as she brushes away the hair sticking there, ghosts a bloody finger over where his scar intersects with his cheekbone. Her eyes, brown and dark, the color of the deepest part of a forest, search his, and her smooth pale face, the face from his dreams, from his nightmares, is blank.

She turns sharply back to the dais, speaks with a surety that betrays her frail appearance, that sets off yet more hushed voices on the outskirts of the room. “I want him.” 

Lucien’s heart beats once too hard, like it’s trying to abandon his ribcage and go to her. Elain doesn’t move, but she speaks again with the same clarity. “Don’t kill him. Give him to me.”

Rhys and Feyre share another look, another moment of that wordless communication. Rhys sits back with a little sigh, playing, rather than being, Lucien realizes, the lord indulging his womenfolk. “What do you think, dearest? Shall we make a gift of him instead?”

Feyre gives Elain a tight little smile. She’s cautious, but amused. “Do you think you can handle controlling a dangerous prisoner, Elain?”

Lucien should be offended by the  _ dangerous _ , by the suggestion that he’d hurt any of them, but he’s more struck by Feyre’s tone. She and Rhys are acting like parents giving their daughter a puppy, like he really is the dog Rhys likened him to, nothing more than some kind of twisted pet Elain’s asking to keep. Maybe it’s an act meant for this  _ place _ . Maybe it isn’t. Either way it makes him feel hot with humiliation, more so than even the gagging or the shackling or the fact that he’s kneeling in Tamlin’s blood.

“Yes,” Elain says, unaffected.

Feyre settles back in her throne too, and she gives a deep, gracious nod. “Then he’s all yours.”

Satisfied, Elain turns back. She looks at him only fleetingly, addressing the guards. “Clean him up. Bring him to my room.” It makes him feel something tentatively not terrible, until she adds, coldly, “Make sure he’s still restrained.”

 

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Join me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/valamerys) for inevitable acowar bitching or to yell at me about my fic habits. whichever.


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